The Nobel
by Articioc
Summary: we are in the future and Thirteen wins the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine.


People coming from all the world filled the Stockholm Concert Hall: austere men of study and culture, smiling politicians, and bored successful businessmen, were assembled making a colorful ensemble waiting for the ceremony. When the time came to award the prize in Medicine and Physiology, Her Majesty Victoria I of Sweden called on stage dr. Remy Hadley.

Fifty years, yet a beautiful woman, charming in her still slender body well fit in a light blue suit, Thirteen –as was yet nicknamed some friends of her- step forward and received the prize from the hands of the monarch, who told in Swedish that dr. Hadley would make a speech in English. Thirteen, excited –indeed, moved- shut her eyes, swallowed and then began to speak.

"Ladies and gentleman, I hope you forgive the fact that I do not speak Swedish, but I am American and you well know American barely speak their own language." There were some laugh among spectators. "So you'll be forced to hear me speaking in mediocre English but excuse me: it's my mother tongue." Additional laughs. "I think felicitous to tell you the account of how I discovered the therapy for Huntington's chorea, in part to explain how from evil can arise some good, in part because you all have somewhere read the tale, but I believe you didn't heard the full version." Other laughs: audience was pleased.

Thirteen thought to have aptly warmed her listeners and chose to introduce the speech's boring part. "Almost twenty years ago I discovered to be positive to Huntington's, my CAG count was 58, this meaning that I had strong probabilities to develop symptoms within my thirties: and so it happened. When I understood I would develop this disease and that it would cause my death, I slowly fell in a self-abasing path made with sex and drugs. I have no hindrance admitting this, even if my sons are here, Christopher, Lisa and Lawrence, whom I send a kiss. I wanted to obliterate my mind, drinking my brains out of such problems' knowledge. Actually, it is a thing I learned being very common among people thinking to have no more future.

Essentially, I ruined my professional and personal life… twice, since I two times parted from two person verily loving me; I began experiencing new drugs: maybe to find the better one which would provide me for the best forgetfulness, maybe for wanton boredom, maybe for a depraved clinical curiosity. Anyway, one day, while surfing the net, I found that some drug addicted had paradisiacal sensations with a mixture of mescaline and HU-211, a cannabinoid. Out of curiosity, I bought from a pusher mescaline and marihuana, I consummate them and then I felt immediately better. So I get on the net back and found the way to produce house-made HU-211, being this substance street unavailable. I stole from my hospital some useful tools and started cooking in my kitchen. Now, you all know that your apartment's kitchen is not at all a sterilized place where make scientific experimentation, but in those times I was sure to have nothing to lose and, truly, at the then medicine's state-of-the-art, that was right.

The evening before I made a very spicy supper and apparently in the kitchen there still were traces of nutmeg: not everybody knows that nutmeg contains myristicin, a substance reputed to be a strong deliriant, even if fatal myristicin poisonings in humans are very rare.

You must know that in those times I was losing control over my body and I had an unbroken tremor, plus many various psychiatric symptoms, surely in part arising from my drug consumption. Maybe this shaking of mine helped, so to say, to mess up with ingredients and to make up that mix, which that cold February night gave me something more than a temporary ecstasy. Not long after assuming that drug, I noticed a strange thing: I was no more quaking. I could clutch objects without problem, I could walk faster than a snail, I could do things I believied impossible to do for me at that time.

The morning after, however, tremor was back and I ascribed that wonderful experience to drugs' effect. This made the mescaline/HU-211 mix my favorite dope in the next days; as time went by, however, I noticed my symptoms actually decreasing, even if not to the extent that I felt that marvelous night. So I decided to contact my former fellow physician dr. Foreman: and both of us thought of a temporary and transitory remission. But, as I said before, I had nothing to lose so I kept doping myself.

It was April when I met another former coworker of mine, dr. Gregory House, the man in memory of which I inscribe this prize. I retell of my regular bettering and we ended talking about the first time I assumed the drug mix. Hee asked me if maybe in the kitchen were some substances source of contamination and in that moment I reminded the spicy meal, the nutmeg and its psychotropic properties.

Once I went home, I began again cooking, this time adding everything was in my kitchen in February. Well, when I added nutmeg my symptoms started dwindling even more. For six month I doped with that stuff and when the summer ended I began moving like a normal subject. I also discovered being mescaline not necessary to treat HD effects and that HU-211 and hydroxidated myristicin were enough. It seemed to me a too important thing not to share it to dr. Foreman and Smith, who long time ago studied Huntington's. We resolved to start an experimentation but we needed a whole five years to obtain DEA and F&DA permission to use dope in clinical trials.

I, anyway, don't let be stopped by their bureaucratic delays and secretly recruited volunteers, galenically preparing substances that from drugs had became medicines and starting a sort of underground clinical trial, which confirmed that Huntington's neuronal degeneration is totally halted by the synergic action of HU-211 and isomyristicin in precise doses.

Finally we could start a real experimentation, following tirelessly and joyfully our patients, for years; meanwhile I married and had sons: thing that I once believed impossible, I truly did not believe to survive so long.

Only in 2023 we put sufficient information together to publish an article on the New England Journal Of Medicine: article that makes me win this prize. As I said, I ascribe it to a great physician, dr. Gregory House, who recently passed away, but still lives in our admiration for him and in the heart and the breath of his sons: both his sons in the spirit, tens of people who live because of him, and our sons in the flesh."  
Thirteen was moved, she couldn't help crying. "I dedicate my Nobel prize also to my colleagues here, who followed my health and my fight against chorea, doctors Foreman, Smith, Taub, Chase, Cuddy, and Cameron, my partner in life and study."

The audience in the hall started clapping. Thirteen stepped back from the stage before congratulating with queen and other laureates. Thirteen never was so happy, stage's light almost dazzled her, she was so happy to feel everything aside becoming light, so many, many light-

And Thirteen awoke. She was in her bed. She looked around: her apartment room; from the windows entered in all its glory the light of a beautiful day of a strangely sunny February.

"Damn, 'twas all a dream!" she said, and began crying. He hadn't Nobel, hadn't sons, hadn't job, and was alone… was her actually alone? Remy heard some noises, like flushing water, from the bathroom. Who was in there?

"Finally, you're awake!" Allison Cameron get out of the bathroom, wiping her hairs with the bath-robe's hood. "You must give up that stuff… this night you fell head over heels!"

Cameron got closer to Thirteen and smiling she kneeled on the bed. "How do you feel?" She asked with a sympathetic smile.

Thirteen returned her smile. "I'm in pieces. Maybe you're right, I gotta give up that shit." She paused, then rubbed her head and rise up from the bed. "Whatever, what was that? Mescaline and- and that other oddly named st- Remy didn't end the phrase. Allison was staring at her, eyes wide open, gaping.

"OH MY GOD, REMY! YOUR HANDS! LOOK!"

Thirteen at first didn't understand, but soon did as Cameron said and watched her hands. Strange. No, not strange. Impossible. She shut her eyes and watched them again. She raised her hands and put them in front of her face. Jesus, it was- it was impossible.

That month-lasting tremor… vanished!


End file.
